Thursday, October 03, 2013

A
driving school in Zaragoza decided to offer a fixed price for
whatever the number[not 'amount'!] of lessons you finally required to
pass your test. I should say 'prices' as they were different for
males and females, with the latter being more expensive. When they
were taken to court they argued that both their experience and
government statistics showed that women took longer to come to the
boil, as it were. And the judge - a man, of course - found in their
favour. What the company should have done, perhaps, was to come up
with a universal price which took all this into consideration. But I
suppose this would have risked losing all their male custom to lower
price competitors with a client book biased in favour of men.
Business can be tough at times.

Talking
of driving . . . Cost aside, there's never
been a better time to travel on Spain's magnificent inter-city roads.
Traffic on the (mostly) toll roads has fallen by a whopping 35% since
the start of the recession. Plus they may well be about to increase
the speed limit from 120kph(73mph) to 130kph(79mph).

And
talking of the recession . . . As in the UK, the Spanish government
is banging the drum of recovery, asserting that the economy will grow
slightly in the 4th quarter and then continue to grow - by a total of
0.7% - next year. "The corner has been turned and the recession
is over" insists President Rajoy, though more objective
observers are not so sure. Near term, unemployment actually grew in
September but "at the lowest rate for many years". Which
won't be much of a comfort to those back on the dole after their
summer employment ended. For next year, S&P see unemployment
rising to a barely credible 27%. Meanwhile, the economy will have
contracted by 1.5% in 2013.

What
does this mean for property prices here? Well, everyone seems to
agree that the bottom has not been reached and - saving those very
expensive properties in very desirable places - prices will continue
to fall during 2014. So you might want to keep your Spanish castle
dream on ice for a bit longer. Unless you're one of those who've
decided that property abuse scandals and the threat of rapacious new
property taxes have put you off Spain for ever. In which case, why
are you reading this?

The
2014 state budget is, naturally, one of cuts. Well, national debt is
now approaching 100% of GDP. Education, Health, Benefits and Pensions
have all been hit, contrary - of course - to earlier promises. In
Health, the government has introduced a controversial law making
hospital patients contribute 10% to the cost of their medicines - on
the (pretty logical) grounds that they'd be doing so if they were at
home. Somehow, though, it feels wrong and a number of regional
governments have said they won't implement it. Not sure what happens
then. In terms of compulsion, I mean. Yet another appeal to the
Constitutional Court?

All
political parties of any strength are broad churches and
right-of-centre parties always have a right extreme with views
distasteful to everyone else in the country. Spain's PP party is
righter than, say, the UK's Conservative party, with a right wing
which many see as very Catholic(Opus Dei) and pretty fascist.
So maybe we shouldn't be too surprised to read that there's a
memorabilia market in the outskirts of Madrid where you can buy
everything from posters of Franco, to Nazi swastikas and SS Totenkopf
skull emblems. The PP mayor who allowed this to take place gave the
stock Spanish response-cum-apology - "There was never any
intention to hurt anybody’s feelings." PP members
left of its far-right wing have said they're shocked. And worried
about the effect this will have on the party's image. As well they
might be.

In
another embarrassment to Spain - and a further knock to Brand Spain
(La Marca España), the OECD has included the country in a
black list of countries in which there's either nil or restricted
freedom and has also said Spain is the only country in the world
which blocks the entry of their observers. For example to the recent
protest march against the King. The other countries in the black list
are the usual suspects. So, these are strong charges and you can read
more about them here, in Spanish, but I've failed to find any
reference to them in mainstream media. Anyone else?

8 comments:

Well Colin, a marauding Irish protestant, born in a bar – OK, now we understand. And I won’t even mention being dressed in clothes of the opposite sex!! Whether a true ancestor or not, she was certainly a very tough and colorful woman.

Well, it's a deliberately obscure reference to the demand that residents tell the Hacienda ("Just for interest") of overseas assets. As a prelude to a new Patrimonio tax on these?? No need to worry if you haven't got any; I think the threshold for the re-introduced Spanish Patrimonio is a million euros.